When the Soviet Union entered world politics / Jon Jacobson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacobson, Jon, 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soviet Union--Foreign relations--1917-1945.

Soviet Union.

International relations.

Physical Description:

xi, 388 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994.

Summary:

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, how can we understand its role in twentieth-century world politics? What was distinctive about the foreign affairs conducted by the Soviet Union? To answer these questions, Jon Jacobson examines the formative years of Soviet foreign relations, the decade of the 1920s. He demonstrates how the USSR's foreign policy took on its lasting form as Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, and others sought to promote the national security and economic development of the new Soviet state and to extend their revolution to Europe and Asia. Jacobson adopts a post-Cold War interpretive stance, incorporating glasnost and perestroika-era revelations, to integrate the two modes of early Soviet foreign relations -- revolution and diplomacy -- into a single stimulating discussion. He shows that foreign relations were more central to the political imagination of the first Soviet leaders, both in their plans for industrialization and in their struggles with each other, than has been previously recognized. Jacobson's work intersects with the sophisticated body of scholarship on early Soviet history and synthesizes the wealth of information that has become available to scholars since the 1960s.

Contents:

1. The Ideological and Political Foundations of Soviet Foreign Policy 11

2. Internationalizing the October Revolution 32

3. Revolutionary Russia and Islamic Asia 51

4. First Detente 81

5. Soviet Russia and the British Empire 106

6. The Challenges of Capitalist Stabilization 128

7. Narkomindel and the Diplomacy of European Security 152

8. Russia, Europe, and Asia After Locarno 177

9. The Drive for Industrialization and the War Scare 206

10. Economy, Politics, and Diplomacy in Crisis 233

11. Foreign Relations During "the Great Turn" 257

List of Soviet Government, Communist Party, and Comintern Officials 347.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-377) and index.

ISBN:

0520083326

0520089766

OCLC:

30026041